If you live in India and visit file sharing websites, you may be out of luck: It is being reported that India is now blocking sites such as Megaupload, Putlocker, and Rapidshare. When a user attempts to visit any of these websites, they are met with a message by the Department of Telecom (DOT) stating that the site is now blocked.

As reported in our forums and on ZDnet, the blocking comes as a surprise to many end users as it seems that not everyone is blocked. Some say that they are still able to access the sites while others receive the prompt that is shown above.

The most likely reason for blocking the websites is to stop the distribution of copyrighted content. This is an unfortunate side effect because these types of sites are useful for legitimate purposes. The Internet moves much faster than any government entity, so it is likely a new alternative will pop up in the near future for those in this region.

This type of censorship may become more common as corporations begin to use government agencies to protect their content. At what point does government involvement become too heavy? It starts with copyrighted content, but where does it end?